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Every so often someone comes up with the oh-so-original idea that academics should be more engaged with the public and tries to drench the internet in that lovely sentiment. Most recently, it was an article in the Guardiantitled, and I’m not making this up, “Academics: leave your ivory towers and pitch your work to the media”. Most of these articles have a similar message: if we stuffy academics would, for just a moment, give up our polysyllabic technical terms and our three hundred page monographs for the snappy, ‘plain English’ style of the popular press, everyone would win. We (the academics) would get the credit and attention we deserve for our work. The public would get more sophisticated, cutting-edge work to read. Media outlets would have quality content to share with the world. Win. Win. Win. Right? Well… sort of. Read more ›

Yesterday, I had the misfortune of reading a blog post presenting an analysis of popular music lyrics using language related metrics. Earlier today, I was cringing as the post and the Complex article about it popped up repeatedly as friends and acquaintances shared these links over social media. Then, I realized I’m a linguist with a blog, and I was suddenly reliving the same fantasies about media integrity, civic duty, and raising the bar of public discourse that I have when I watch The Newsroom. So allow me to tell you why I think this particular analysis is both methodologically sloppy and ideologically gross. Read more ›

Throughout my life, I’ve heard words referring to gay people tossed around as casual insults, often used as weapons against people who are not themselves gays or lesbians (see, for example, the use of “no homo“). It’s behavior like this that can make it difficult to know which words we should call each other.

Interestingly, while terms like faggot are pretty obviously hurtful, people may have considerably different perceptions of terms like homosexual. Jeremy Peters writes “To most ears, it probably sounds inoffensive. A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual”. Yet as Peters notes, some gays and lesbians find the term offensive. In fact, in 2006, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) listed it as an offensive term.

The death of Freddie Gray, a young Black man, while in police custody on April 19 sent residents of Baltimore, Maryland into the streets. Many have been actively calling for justice to be carried out, for the police officers responsible to be held accountable, and for wider reforms in the criminal justice system. On Monday, some turned to violence and property destruction, clashing with police, setting fires, and looting.

What are those of us who aren’t in Baltimore seeing and hearing from these events? Read more ›

March Madness has begun. If you’re like me, and you want to think about the language behind it all, and what it says about society, Mental Floss has got you covered. They’ve been kind enough to publish a piece by me on the topic. Read more ›

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On Friday, the Guardian published an article by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin arguing that the word expat (short for “expatriate”) is a label “reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad”. According to Koutonin, the word immigrant is set aside for everyone else — those considered to be part of ‘inferior races’. Read more ›

The video above features Joe Scarborough and others making the claim that hip hop artists bear some responsibility for a bunch of University of Oklahoma fraternity members’ racist chant (surprisingly this show aired on MSNBC, the US’s allegedly left-leaning network). My immediate reaction to this was “I cannot even follow this argument. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the world in which I live”. If that’s your reaction, there’s nothing I will write here that you don’t already know. Feel free to navigate your browser ship to some other part of the Internet Sea. However, If your reaction is “I dunno I think Joe’s got a point”, well then hear me out. Read more ›